They’re not nearly indestructible. Something people rarely seem to grasp about creatures like these and Deinococcus: the reason they’re not everywhere is because they’re vulnerable to other life, and get eaten or out-competed all the time. They’re just resilient to the stuff we’re not to.

“Something people rarely seem to grasp about creatures like these and Deinococcus: the reason they’re not everywhere is because they’re vulnerable to other life, and get eaten or out-competed all the time.”

I don’t know about Deinococcus, but as I understand it, tardigrades ARE almost everywhere. Everywhere water, even if only in thin films, is available; from Pole to Pole, from the highest mountains to the depths of the oceans, deserts to tropical rain forests.

I hope we don’t kill any Space Bears in the process. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had larger cousins floating around in space the size of Jupiter. I really don’t want planet Earth swallowed up by giant Space Bears in an act of space vengeance.

Pyrococcus furiosus are BADASS! They are extremophiles (from Latin extremus meaning “extreme” and Greek philiÄ meaning “love”).
Their name means Rushing Fireberry, so do not let them anywhere near your testes satchel!

Tardigrades are god’s gift to those of us nerdy enough to know what water bears are. If they came in hamster size, I’d own a hundred of them. I have no doubt whatsoever that the water bears will do just fine in any experiment the astronauts put them through. I’m not so sure about the other lifeforms, but then again, I don’t care.

And this is really just the test flight. The real mission comes this Fall, when a canister of these microscopic organisms will be going to Phobos, moon of Mars (and, hopefully, back to Earth after it gets samples) aboard the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos-Grunt

also from wiki:
“September 2007, tardigrades were taken into low Earth orbit on the FOTON-M3 mission and for 10 days were exposed to the vacuum of space. After they were returned to Earth, it was discovered that many of them survived and laid eggs that hatched normally.[8]”